Valentine (18 page)

“You know yourself, Bénédict, how easy it would be to demolish that exggerated satire. So I will not take the trouble. I will simply ask you what you expect to do with this ardent activity which is consuming you, and if your conscience does not bid you to employ it in some way useful to society ?”

“My conscience bids me do nothing of the sort.
Society
does not need those who do not need it. I can imagine the power of that imposing word over new peoples, in a newly-discovered country which a small number of men, assembled only yesterday, are striving to fertilize and to make it supply their needs. In such a case, if colonization is voluntary, I despise the man who will go there and grow fat in idleness by the labor of others. I can imagine patriotism in free or virtuous nations, if there are any such. But here on French soil, where, whatever people may say, the soil lacks arms to work it, where every profession is full to overflowing with aspirants, where the human species, crowding in sickening fashion about the palaces of the great, crawls and licks the footprints of the rich man ; where vast sums, heaped up according to all the laws of social wealth in the hands of a few men, are the stakes in the never-ending game between greed, immorality and stupidity, in this land of immodesty and poverty, of vice and desolation; and you
expect me to be a
citizen
in this rotten civilization—rotten to the core ? to sacrifice my desires, my inclination, my caprice to its needs, that I may be its dupe or its victim, and that the coin which I might have tossed to the beggar shall fall into the millionaire's strong-box. Must I expend my energies in doing good in order to increase the sum total of evil, to furnish my contingent to the departments which license spies, gamblers and prostitutes? No, on my life ! I will not do it! I prefer to be nobody in this fair France, the most enlightened of nations. As I have told you, Louise, I have five hundred francs a year; any man who has five hundred francs a year can live and live in peace.”

“Very well, Bénédict, if you propose to sacrifice every noble ambition to this craving for repose which has so suddenly succeeded your fierce impatience, if you choose to make no use of all your talents and all your estimable qualities, and to live an obscure and placid life in the seclusion of this valley, make sure of the first essential element of that happy existence,—banish from your thoughts this absurd love.”

“Absurd, did you say ? No, it shall not be absurd ; I will take my oath to that. It shall be a secret between God and myself. And how could heaven, which inspired it, make sport of it ? No, it shall be my shield against sorrow, my resource against ennui. What else than it suggested to me yesterday the resolution to remain free and to be happy at small expense ? O blessed passion, which, from its very inception, makes itself manifest by brightness and peace! Celestial truth, which unseals the eyes and sweeps the mind clear of all earthly things ! Sublime power, which takes possession of all the senses and floods them with joys hitherto unknown ! O Louise ! do not try to take my love from
me. You could not succeed, and, perhaps, you would become less dear to me; for, I confess, nothing could contend successfully against it. Let me adore Valentine in secret and cherish those illusions which transported me to the skies yesterday. What would reality be compared with them ? Let me fill my life with this one chimera, let me live in the heart of this enchanted valley, with my recollections and with the traces which she left here, with the perfume which remained behind in every field in which she placed her foot, with the harmonies which her voice awoke in every breeze, with the sweet, ingenuous words which escaped her in the innocence of her heart, and which I interpreted as my fancy bade me ; with that pure and ineffable kiss which she deposited on my brow the first day I saw her. Ah ! Louise, that kiss ! Do you remember it ? It was you who suggested it.”

“Oh! yes,” said Louise, rising with an air of consternation, “it was I who did all the mischief.”

*
Valets de cour ou valets de basse-cour.

Valentine, on returning to the château, had found a letter from Monsieur de Lansac on her mantelpiece. According to the custom in fashionable society, she had corresponded with him since her betrothal. This correspondence between a young man and woman who are engaged, which, it would seem, should afford an opportunity for them to know each other intimately and to become more closely united, is almost always cold and stilted. They talk of love in the language of the salons,
they display their wit, their literary style and their handwriting—nothing more.

Valentine wrote so simply that, in the eyes of Monsieur de Lansac and his family, she seemed a person of very small account. Monsieur de Lansac was by no means sorry for it. On the eve of having a considerable fortune at his disposal, it was a part of his plan to hold his wife in complete subjection. And so, although he was not at all in love with her, he exerted himself to write letters which would have been considered epistolary masterpieces according to the ideas of the
beau monde.
He imagined that he simulated thus the warmest attachment that ever entered a diplomat's heart, and that Valentine must necessarily form an exalted opinion of his intellect and his wit. And, in truth, that young woman, who knew absolutely nothing of life and of the passions, had hitherto conceived a great admiration for her fiancé's depth of feeling, and, when she compared his expressions of devotion with her own replies, she accused herself of lagging far behind him by reason of her coldness.

On that evening, fatigued as she was by the intense and joyous emotions of the day, the sight of that superscription, usually so agreeable to her, aroused in her heart a feeling of sadness and remorse. She hesitated some moments before reading it, and at the first words fell into such profound abstraction that she read it with her eyes to the end without understanding a word of it, and without thinking of anything except Louise, Bénédict, the bank of the stream and the osier-beds in the field. She found in this preoccupation a fresh source of self-reproach, and she courageously re-read the letter of the secretary of Embassy. He had written it with the utmost care; unfortunately, it was more obscure, more vapid and more affected than any of the others. In
spite of herself, Valentine was chilled by the mortal indifference which had dictated that composition. She consoled herself for this involuntary impression by attributing it to the fatigue she felt. She went to bed, and, as she was unaccustomed to taking so much exercise, she slept soundly; but she woke the next morning with burning cheeks and sorely disturbed by the dreams she had had.

She took the letter, which she had left on her dressing-table, and read it again with the fervor with which a pious woman begins her prayers anew when she thinks that she has said them too lukewarmly. But it was all in vain ! Instead of the admiration with which she had previously perused his letters, she had now no other feeling than surprise and something which resembled ennui. She rose, frightened at herself, and her mental weariness drove the color from her cheeks.

Then, as she was accustomed to do absolutely as she chose in her mother's absence, and as it did not occur to her grandmother to question her concerning her employment of the previous day, she started for the farm, carrying in a small cedar box all the letters she had received from Monsieur de Lansac during the past year, and flattering herself that Louise's admiration upon hearing them read would rekindle her own.

It would be rash perhaps to assert that that was the sole motive of this second visit to the farm ; but, if Valentine had any other motive, she certainly was not aware of it. However that may be, she found Louise alone. At the request of Athénaïs, who wished to pass a few days away from her cousin, Madame Lhéry had gone with her to pay a visit to one of their relations in the neighborhood; Bénédict was hunting, and Père Lhéry at work in the fields.

Valentine was alarmed at the change in her sister's face. Louise explained it by saying that she had had to sit up with Athénaïs because of her indisposition. However, her grief was allayed by Valentine's caresses, and they soon began to talk freely of their plans for the future. She gave Valentine an opening to show Monsieur de Lansac's letters.

Louise read a few of them, which seemed to her as cold as death and utterly absurd. She instantly passed judgment on the heart of the writer, and saw plainly enough that his kindly intentions with respect to her were entitled to little confidence. The melancholy which oppressed her was intensified by this discovery, and her sister's future seemed to her as hopeless as her own; but she dared not let Valentine detect her feeling. On the day before, perhaps she would have had the courage to enlighten her ; but, after Bénédict's declarations, Louise, who, it may be, suspected Valentine of encouraging him a little, dared not dissuade her from a marriage which would, at all events, remove her from the perils of the existing condition of affairs. So she gave no opinion, but asked Valentine to leave the letters with her, promising to say what she thought of them after reading them carefully.

They were both much depressed by this conversation. Louise had found in it fresh cause for unhappiness, and Valentine, observing her sister's constrained air, had failed to obtain the result which she expected, when Bénédict returned to the farm, singing as he approached, the cavatina
Di placer mi bala il cor.
Valentine started when she recognized his voice ; but Louise's presence caused her an embarrassment which she could not understand, and it was with difficulty that she awaited his appearance with a hypocritical air of indifference.

Bénédict entered the living-room, where the shutters were closed. The sudden transition from the bright sunlight to the darkness of that room prevented his discovering the two women. He hung his gun on the wall, still singing, and Valentine, with beating heart and a smile on her lips, was silently following all his movements, when, as he passed close to her, he discovered her, and uttered a cry of surprise and joy. That cry, from the lowest depths of his heart, expressed more passion and rapture than all of Monsieur de Lansac's letters which were scattered over the table. The instinct of the heart could not deceive Valentine in that respect, and poor Louise realized that her rôle was a pitiful one.

From that moment, Valentine forgot Monsieur de Lansac and the letters and her doubts and her remorse ; she was conscious of nothing save that imperious happiness which stifles every other feeling in the presence of the being whom one loves. She and Bénédict selfishly feasted upon it in the presence of poor Louise, whose situation between them was so false and so painful.

The Comtesse de Raimbault's absence being prolonged several days beyond the time originally fixed for her return, Valentine visited the farm several times. Madame Lhéry and her daughter were still absent, and Bénédict, lying near the path by which Valentine was certain to come, passed many blissful hours awaiting her in the shadow of the hedge. Often he watched her pass, but dared not show himself for fear of betraying his secret by too great earnestness; but, as soon as she had entered the farm-house, he would hurry after her, and, to Louise's great displeasure, he would not leave them during the day. Louise could not complain, for Bénédict was tactful enough to understand their longing to talk together, and he would follow them at a respectful
distance, pretending to beat the bushes with his gun ; but he never lost sight of them. To gaze at Valentine, to intoxicate himself upon the indescribable charm which emanated from her, to pluck lovingly the flowers which her dress had touched, to follow devoutly the path of down-trodden grass which she left behind her, and to notice with rapture that she often turned to see if he were there; to seize, sometimes to divine her glance at a bend in the path, to feel the summons of a sort of magical attraction when she was really calling him in her heart, to obey the subtle, mysterious, irresistible impressions of which love is composed—all these were to Bénédict pure and never wearisome delights which will not seem puerile to you, if you remember that you were once twenty years old.

Louise could not reproach him, for, having solemnly promised her that he would not try to see Valentine alone for a single instant, he kept his promise religiously. So that there was no apparent danger in their life ; but the arrow buried itself deeper each day in those inexperienced hearts, each day they became more oblivious to the future. Those fleeting moments, cast into their lives like a dream, formed already in their eyes a whole existence, which it seemed to them must last forever. Valentine had determined not to think any more of Monsieur de Lansac, and Bénédict said to himself that such happiness could not be swept away by a breath.

Louise was very unhappy. When she saw of what profound love Bénédict was capable, she learned to know that young man, whom she had hitherto looked upon as being ardent and passionate rather than as capable of deep feeling. This power of loving which she discovered in him made him dearer than ever to her. She realized the magnitude of a sacrifice which she had not
understood at all when she made it, and mourned in secret the loss of a happiness which she could have enjoyed more innocently than Valentine. Poor Louise, who was naturally passionate but had learned to conquer her passion after having to undergo its deplorable effects, was contending with bitter and painful emotions. In spite of herself, a consuming jealousy made Valentine's innocent happiness unendurable to her. She could not help deploring the day when she had found her, and their romantic and exalted affection had already lost all its fascination for her ; like most human emotions, it was already stripped of heroism and poesy. Sometimes Louise surprised herself sighing for the time when she had no hope of being reunited to her sister. At such times she had a horror of herself, and prayed to God to put such ignoble feelings away from her. She dwelt upon Valentine's sweet disposition, her purity and her affection, and prostrated herself before her image as before that of a saint whom she was imploring to effect her reconciliation with God. Now and again she formed the enthusiastic but rash project of opening her sister's eyes unreservedly to Monsieur de Lansac's lack of genuine merit, of urging her to break openly with her mother, to yield to her liking for Bénédict, and to make for herself in obscurity a life of love, courage and independence. But this project, although it may be that the self-sacrifice involved in it was not beyond her strength, soon disappeared under the scrutiny of common sense. To lead her sister into the abyss into which she herself had plunged, to deprive her of the fair fame which she herself had lost, to lure her on to the same misery, to sacrifice her to the contagion of her own example—the prospect was of a kind to deter the most fearless unselfishness. Thereupon, Louise persisted in the plan which had seemed
the wisest at first sight: to refrain from enlightening Valentine concerning her fiancé, and to cenceal Bénédict's confidences from her with the utmost care. But, although this was, in her opinion, the best possible course to pursue, she was not without remorse for having led Valentine into such perils, and for lacking the strength to rescue her from them on the instant by leaving the neighborhood.